Artist statement
About Kris Pilcher
Kris Pilcher is an artist, technologist, and storyteller working across physical and virtual space, subconscious material, and emerging systems. His practice moves through XR, moving image, installation, and AI in search of new forms of memory, meaning, and presence.
Practice
Pilcher approaches technology not just as a tool, but as a collaborator. His projects build conversations with machines in order to stretch human creativity rather than flatten it. Across immersive systems and poetic interfaces, he explores how altered reality can hold grief, wonder, intimacy, and transformation.
His work includes dream archives that collect and remix subconscious material, virtual tesseracts rendered in navigable space, emotionally responsive AI metaverses, blockchain memorials, volumetric performances, and XR interventions that amplify hidden histories and imagined futures.
Current research examines how memory, mourning, joy, embodiment, and co-creation evolve as our lives become increasingly entangled with software, sensors, and synthetic intelligence.
Selected institutions
- CCCB — Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona
- ESPRONCEDA Institute of Art & Culture
- Georgia State University / CMII
- MIT / MIT Reality Hack / Spatial Sound Lab
- Ars Electronica
- VRHAM!
- Museum of Other Realities
- Karlskrona Municipality
- Festival de Cannes / Marché du Film Immersive
Selected roles & affiliations
- Artist, technologist, and immersive storyteller
- Director of Emerging Technologies at ESPRONCEDA
- Artist in Residence, Georgia State CMII
- Install advisor, Common-AI-Verse / CCCB
- Creative Director, Underground Atlanta
- Curator / program builder across Espronceda, Immensiva, NUBIA Labs, and Atlanta Digital Art Week
Selected exhibitions & festivals
- AI: Artificial Intelligence — CCCB
- IMMENSIVA VR/AI Residence
- Ars Electronica
- VRHAM!
- Museum of Other Realities
- Art Meets Heritage — Karlskrona
- Atlanta Digital Art Week
- Underground Atlanta arts programming
Selected talks & research contexts
- Georgia State University
- Google Developer Group Atlanta
- CHI 2026
- ACM research contexts
- CODAME ART+TECH
- Festival / curators network conversations in immersive media
Selected press
A broader media and institutional record spanning Atlanta arts coverage, XR features, festival listings, academic research, and interviews.
Highlights
- Atlanta Journal-Constitution — Art projection illuminates Woodruff Park Water Wall
- WABE — Step into the Metaverse in Underground Atlanta’s digital art gallery
- WABE City Lights — Transforming Underground Atlanta
- ArtsATL — Preview: Goat Farm / Field Experiment
- ArtsATL — South Broad Street arts district feature
- South China Morning Post — VR beyond gaming
- Georgia State CMII — Artist in Residence announcement
- arXiv — Purposefully Induced Psychosis (PIP)
Media, interviews, and features
- WonderRoot Artist Feature — Kris Pilcher
- Atlanta Journal-Constitution — 75 Blue Doors project
- Atlanta Journal-Constitution — Wilderness art series inspired by the outdoors
- Creative Loafing — Kris Pilcher curates Well Wishes for Atlanta
- Atlanta Journal-Constitution — Field Experiment finalists
- ArtsATL — Downtown Players Club makes a raw debut
- Creative Loafing — Emerging Artist Award
- Southern Distinction — A Journey In Motion
- CommonCreativ ATL — Q&A with Kris Pilcher
- Atlanta Journal-Constitution — South Downtown sees revival as an artistic community
- TylerPerry.com — Atlanta is the best city in the nation to be an artist
- The Bitter Southerner — Southern Artists Embrace Alternate Realities
- Atlanta Journal-Constitution — Winter lights return to Woodruff Park
- Creative Loafing — No Tomorrow is today
- Objkt Blog — Serpens
- Atlanta Journal-Constitution — Grants awarded to Atlanta artists
- Georgia Public Broadcasting — Georgia Today mention
- Region Blekinge — Podcast interview with Kris Pilcher
Institutional, festival, and research record
- ESPRONCEDA — Kris Pilcher profile (2020)
- VRHAM! — Quantum Tesseract
- Ars Electronica — Stargazer
- Museum of Other Realities — Body Clock / Quantum Tesseract
- Georgia State lecture — Dreaming & VR
- ESPRONCEDA — Kris Pilcher profile (2025)
- arXiv / ACM MM ’25 — Teaching AI to Feel
- CODAME ART+TECH — Mentor profile
- ESPRONCEDA — Silenci en temps de soroll colloquy
- CHI 2026 — The Co-Living between Reality and Virtuality as a Daily Routine
Lectures & conversations
Kris speaks on AI aesthetics, immersive storytelling, speculative systems, and the future of creativity. Recent audiences include Georgia Tech, the University of Tashkent, Georgia State University, and interdisciplinary research communities working between art and emerging technology.
Data privacy
Across immersive experiences, apps, games, websites, and software, Pilcher’s general rule is simple: the work is not built to harvest people.
- Data is not sold
- Ads are not served unless a specific sponsored experience requires them
- Sensors or files may be accessed only during runtime when required for the experience
- Dream-related projects are the rare exception where participant submissions are intentionally collected
Have fun. Be weird. Stay free.